It’s a weird feeling when a horror movie makes you think more deeply about God than a sermon did. But that’s kind of the space A24 lives in.
We didn’t set out to find spiritual depth in indie films about talking rocks, dying whales or cosmic bagels. But somewhere between the grief, dread and absurdity, A24 has quietly become one of the most spiritually resonant storytellers of our time. And for a generation that’s not always sure what we believe—but still deeply wants to believe something—that matters.
Their newest release, The Legend of Ochi, which dropped today, is yet another entry into A24’s increasingly spiritual canon. The fantasy epic follows Yuri, a teenage girl who breaks away from her father’s teachings to return a mythical creature to its family. On the surface, it’s an enchanting quest film, but beneath it is a layered exploration of empathy, reconciliation and what happens when inherited beliefs are challenged by lived experience.
Isaiah Saxon, the film’s director, has said he wanted to tap into the “mysteries of nature” and the sense of wonder he experienced as a kid. That awe is tangible—especially in the contrast between Yuri’s spiritual instinct to show mercy and her father Maxim’s more rigid, religious worldview. The film asks pointed questions about tradition, trust and what kind of faith actually leads to healing. It’s not a theology textbook, but it might be one of the most quietly spiritual stories A24 has ever told.
A24 films don’t preach. They don’t quote Scripture or offer tidy moral resolutions. But they ask the kinds of questions we’re already wrestling with: What does it mean to live well when the world feels broken? Is grace real? What happens when God feels silent? Can love still mean something when everything else falls apart?
Take First Reformed. Directed by Paul Schrader—who was raised in a strict Calvinist home and didn’t even see a movie until he was 17—it’s one of the most unflinching portrayals of spiritual crisis ever put on screen.
The film follows Reverend Ernst Toller, a pastor slowly unraveling under the weight of climate anxiety, corporate corruption and personal grief. “Will God forgive us?” he asks, more as an accusation than a question. Schrader said the story was inspired by the Book of Job and his own experience with disillusionment, noting that “the church had lost its relevance.” For a lot of us, that hits a little too close to home.
That kind of spiritual ache shows up in a lot of A24’s work. The Green Knight might look like a surreal medieval epic, but beneath the visuals is a parable about shame, mortality and unearned grace. Gawain isn’t a hero—he’s a fraud hoping to fake his way into glory. Only when he confronts death honestly does the possibility of redemption emerge. It’s messy and ambiguous, but that makes it feel more true. Like the Gospel seen through a cracked mirror.
Even the studio’s most absurd and chaotic movie, Everything Everywhere All At Once, somehow manages to land in a place of deep spiritual resonance. Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (collectively known as Daniels), the film began, in their words, as “a foolish prayer to a cold, indifferent universe.”
But by the end, it transforms into something radically hopeful. Not because the chaos gets fixed, but because love shows up in the middle of it. The film’s central message—that kindness and presence matter, even when nothing makes sense—sounds a lot like 1 Corinthians 13 in disguise: “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong.”
The Daniels have said the film is their way of working out meaning through contradiction. “We wanted to explore the multiverse not as a sci-fi playground, but as a metaphor for the messiness of life,” they wrote in a director’s note. “And through that mess, we hoped to find something human.” For a generation raised on curated perfection and algorithmic identity crises, that feels profoundly sacred.
A24’s horror films also have their own way of getting under our spiritual skin. Their latest release, Heretic, stars Hugh Grant as a charming but unhinged recluse who lures two Mormon missionaries into a psychological trap. It’s deeply unsettling, but it’s also one of the few mainstream films that takes faith seriously without reducing it to a punchline.
Directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods said they wanted to make a thriller that explores “the genuine search for faith” in a way that feels both respectful and terrifying. They cited influences like Inherit the Wind and Contact—films that wrestle with belief, not mock it.
There’s something refreshing—even healing—about a studio willing to sit in the discomfort. A lot of us were raised in churches that offered answers to questions we hadn’t even asked yet. A24 offers something different: the chance to ask our own questions out loud, and maybe even sit with the silence that follows. Their stories trust that mystery, doubt and contradiction aren’t things to resolve—they’re part of the search for God.
It would be easy to write these films off as too weird, too dark, too cynical. But that misses the point. Scripture is full of strange stories too—prophets laying on their sides for months, God speaking through donkeys, entire books of poetry about how nothing makes sense. When Ecclesiastes says “everything is meaningless,” or when Job screams into the void, we don’t call that a lack of faith. We call it Scripture. A24 isn’t trying to make religious art.
But they are telling the truth about what it feels like to hope for transcendence when everything around you feels broken. And in that honesty, they’re making space for something holy.
We’re not saying A24 is the new church. But in a cultural moment where spiritual burnout is real, where certainty feels fake, and where most Christian films still act like the struggle ends after the altar call—these movies are doing something the Church could learn from.
They’re not offering answers. They’re helping us ask better questions. And maybe that’s exactly what faith looks like right now.
